7.14.2012

As several of you know from emails you've received, we've learned on this trip that Maybelle is the world's best traveler. On our flight she read her own book for about 45 minutes, allowing Biffle and me do to quite a bit of reading of our own. Despite the fact that she's been running on far less sleep than she needs, she's been cheerful and by and large a very good sport: she was the normal amount of complainy when we were stuck in traffic for an hour and 45 minutes yesterday and therefore didn't get to go on the boat tour that my uncle had bought us all tickets for (that was really a bummer), and she has been able to overcome her wide-eyed overwhelmed-ness pretty quickly when surrounded by Piepmeiers, Browns, Dinwiddies, Woolstons, Pedersens, and others she doesn't know well. She also had the world's best time in the hotel swimming pool with her uncles and aunt.

But she's also decided, on day three, that she's ready to go home.

"Go home," she told Biffle last night.

"We're going back to our hotel," he told her.

"Airplane," she said. "Go home."

"Ah," he thought, "She's specifically asking for home." He explained to her that we'd go on an airplane soon and go home, but not tonight. This morning she's asking me again. We're happily hanging out in our hotel room with a sleeping Boppa, and she's said to me twice, "Go home."'

I'm diverting her with some online episodes of Dora the Explorer, and I know there are lots of good distractions coming her way. But she's really and truly longing for home. So she has Biffle's adventurous spirit, but she has my love for the routine, stable, and familiar.

Things you might want to know

Baxter Sez is

Alison Piepmeier was a professor in the Women's and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston, and much, much more. When she wasn't working to bring down the patriarchy, she wrote here and elsewhere about feminist disability studies, Zines, her ugly car, and an eclectic range of topics. She also wrote about the brain tumor that eventually caused her death on August 12, 2016, at the age of 43.
Twitter: @alisonpiepmeier